Football board games had been in existence in some form or other since the late 19th century, but Subbuteo can confidently claim to be the king of them all.
Inventor Peter Adolph based it on another finger-flicking iteration, Newfooty. Bizarrely, the name was taken from the Latin name for a hobby hawk (falco Subbuteo), a nod to the fact that Adolph originally wanted to call the game ‘Hobby’.
The game sees the 20 round-based players (and two goalkeepers) positioned on a cloth football pitch. Players would flick their footballers towards the ball in attack, or into strategic positions in defence.
Subbuteo would see off the competition and reign supreme in the sixties and seventies. The development of electronic video games saw Subbuteo’s popularity diminish, but it still exists today: a classic throwback for older players, and an interesting curio for the younger generation.
